Quality In Ubuntu

Quality has always been an important value in the Ubuntu community, but over the last few releases we have faced some challenges in how we can assure and deliver quality. There have been various reasons for this, which include:

Fewer automated tests that we would like and limited coverage in key components (e.g. Unity).

Out of date manual tests with limited coverage.

No acceptance testing for the distribution (this mean’t that some broken features would land in the development release).

Limited support and leadership from the Canonical Community Team in harnessing community participation.

Over the last year quality has become a strong area of focus inside Canonical. This has included re-factoring the roles and responsibilities of QA staff (focusing them on defect analysis as opposed to just bug triage), Pete Graner has been leading an effort to get an extensive automated testing infrastructure in place, Jason Warner has led an effort to put acceptance criteria in place for Canonical upstreams (this requires that a certain level of quality is assured before Unity updates are landed in the development branch of Ubuntu), and I have hired Nicholas Skaggs who starts in January to build out our QA community, with a particular focus on manual testing and triage.

I will be following up more in the new year about QA as Nicholas joins the Canonical Community team and we build out our QA community infrastructure, communication channel, and focus.

234567

well, i can tell you: a lot of people think that canonical is moving away from the community by imposing things on us instead of giving us the choice. might be one of the reasons for less community support.

234567

but besides, you’re doing a terrific job. thanks anyway. but keep in mind, it’s all about freedom and choice. and customisation. and when unity becomes usable one day, i’ll be back for sure! i’ll give it a try from time to time in my vm……

234567

but besides, you’re doing a terrific job. thanks anyway. but keep in mind, it’s all about freedom and choice. and customisation. and when unity becomes usable one day, i’ll be back for sure! i’ll give it a try from time to time in my vm……

Philip Leaper

Completely disagree with 234567 – I have almost as much customisation as I could possibly need with Unity – it does the job and looks good anyway. Most of my customisations are around keybindings, fonts and colours – all of which I have complete control over.

Looking forward to 12.04 to iron out the small inconsistencies that remain – but on the whole a great job so far.

Philip Leaper

Completely disagree with 234567 – I have almost as much customisation as I could possibly need with Unity – it does the job and looks good anyway. Most of my customisations are around keybindings, fonts and colours – all of which I have complete control over.

Looking forward to 12.04 to iron out the small inconsistencies that remain – but on the whole a great job so far.

Anonymous

Why do you people say crap like that? Canonical has not taken choice from us. Yes, Unity is limited in what you can do to it, but you’re free to install gnome-shell, kde, xfce and lxde, you’re free to change window managers, network managers, indeed you can change every single thing in your system just as easily now as before. I have no firsthand experience with how they communicate with their community, but making everybody feel seen and heard is impossible when a small staff tries to reach out to millions of users.

I, for one, am impressed at how canonical have dealt with their pains of growth, and raised the bar for quality and performance in big distros.

Keep up the good work!

234567

@philip: or maybe i’m just too stupid for it? i tried 11.04, where i wasn’t able to configure anything, checked 11.10 recently, couldn’t find the package manager immediately and gave up again
anyway by now the discussion sucks, we’ve heard the arguments of both sides, it just a shame to see ubuntu lose its pole position so quickly………

234567

@philip: or maybe i’m just too stupid for it? i tried 11.04, where i wasn’t able to configure anything, checked 11.10 recently, couldn’t find the package manager immediately and gave up again
anyway by now the discussion sucks, we’ve heard the arguments of both sides, it just a shame to see ubuntu lose its pole position so quickly………

LanceRooke

I love Ubuntu, but I definitely agree that it needs improvement and am glad you are working to improve it’s quality. Speed, stability, and customization. These are key. I saw that you’ve improved the speed of the software center in version 12.04. That is good. There are other bugs and defects that also need to be worked out. Sometimes the doggone thing has to be tweaked after install just to be able to have desktop icons. Sometimes gnome interferes with unity <—- at least I think that’s what causes the ICEauthority error. Overall though, I LOVE Ubuntu, and not just as a concept, but as a product. I am very much looking forward to using better and better versions. Quality is top priority and I am glad to see improvements are being made.

LanceRooke

I love Ubuntu, but I definitely agree that it needs improvement and am glad you are working to improve it’s quality. Speed, stability, and customization. These are key. I saw that you’ve improved the speed of the software center in version 12.04. That is good. There are other bugs and defects that also need to be worked out. Sometimes the doggone thing has to be tweaked after install just to be able to have desktop icons. Sometimes gnome interferes with unity <—- at least I think that’s what causes the ICEauthority error. Overall though, I LOVE Ubuntu, and not just as a concept, but as a product. I am very much looking forward to using better and better versions. Quality is top priority and I am glad to see improvements are being made.

Jojobinks

“Over the last year quality has become a strong area of focus inside Canonical.” – LOL You released Unity before it was mature enough to be used by anyone yet you still have the balls to say this? Pathetic.

Jojobinks

“Over the last year quality has become a strong area of focus inside Canonical.” – LOL You released Unity before it was mature enough to be used by anyone yet you still have the balls to say this? Pathetic.

234567

@cmyrland: i do know how to install myself another desktop, but have a look at the forums. many people don’t. you also find comments like “tried ubuntu, don’t like the GUI, i’m switching back to win”……………………….

Anonymous

Your comment doesn’t make sense. Sure, we know that there are areas where quality needs to improve in Unity, and this is part of the reason why we are focusing so extensively on quality. However the quality challenges are wider – to get better defect analysis, ISO builds for testing, better infrastructure, and automated testing.

If you think I have balls for talking about this, then so be there balls.

Anonymous

Your comment doesn’t make sense. Sure, we know that there are areas where quality needs to improve in Unity, and this is part of the reason why we are focusing so extensively on quality. However the quality challenges are wider – to get better defect analysis, ISO builds for testing, better infrastructure, and automated testing.

If you think I have balls for talking about this, then so be there balls.

Suggestioniator

oh yeah, @jono: please please copy some of the win7-GUI features. i have win7 on my pc at work and i do have to say: they have the shiniest GUI of all of them! the window handling is awesome as well as the taskbar…….please please ubuntu will you????

http://rockfashion.se/ J Andersson

@4d172ef35113c4f511212990b5d25156:disqus What distro (if Linux) are you on now? I’m trying out different distros in order to find the one fitting my purposes. Ubuntu was, until version 10.10, my choice of distro, but since 11.04 I’m searching for alternatives.

Anonymous

I don’t think Canonical is moving away from the community – the community are just as involved in the development of Ubuntu as they have ever been, but I am not going to deny that there are some deficiencies in how the community can participate in design, but I think we are starting to see some improvements there.

Anonymous

Thanks, LanceRooke.

I think the key point here is that we need to bring QA intrinsicly into the development process and life-cycle. This is what much of the work will be focused on: better testing, assessment criteria, and tracking of QA.

Anonymous

It depends on what you mean by “lose its pole position”. If you mean “be the cool choice for Linux enthusiasts”, I agree we are facing more of a challenge.

Ubuntu is widening it’s focus to bring Free Software to more people. Our goal is to make an ubiquitous Free Software platform, and do that you need to make it so non-geeks can use it too. This requires some changes that some geeks won’t like, hence some of the bickering in recent months.

In my mind we are enhancing the position of Ubuntu to be in the pole position of Free Software if we can open up our userbase to everyone, geeks and non-geeks alike.

Anonymous

Thanks for the support and participating in the discussion!

Anonymous coward

For a long time ubuntu simply was the best distribution around when it came to supported hardware, but unfortunately that has changed for my systems with the last couple of releases: They don’t even shut down properly anymore when running ubuntu (they are fine with other distros though, even with earlier ubuntu versions), the UI is full of graphics glitches, etc…. considering that I have really standard hardware (eg. a Samsung netbook) this is really surprising to me.

I hope this quality initiative will manage to get obvious issues like the one that drove me to other linux distros fixed before a new release is let out into the wild. Good luck with that!

Suggestionator

thing is: at this point i couldn’t possibly recommend ubuntu to any newbies. quite contrary to what you’re aiming for!!!!……and thats because i don’t understand unity! i understand xfce, gnome 2 /3, kde, win7, vista, osx, etc…..but i haven’t got a clue how to use unity efficiently! and for now i have given up trying………………..
so anyway, when installing linux for a newbie these days, i’m going for linux mint 11. thats a fine choice for everyone…………………..
i have a friend whos recently converted from vista to unity and he’s happy with it. i’m meeting him in couple of days, maybe that will offer me a few insights on unity, but for now, i think you’re going in the wrong direction kind of thing……….

http://missionaljourneyman.com/ Adam Gonnerman

Ubuntu lost me at Unity. If “quality” there can be improved, I’d gladly return. Yes, I know I can modify and change out desktops, but when I’m trying to introduce my friends to the GNU/Linux alternative, Ubuntu with Unity out of the box just doesn’t cut it. Just a few weeks ago a friend told me he’d installed Ubuntu and was struggling to learn how to “make it work.” I suggested Linux Mint instead. He switched and has been much happier. I don’t want that to be the case. I’d rather be able to go back 100% to Ubunu.

Anonymous

When you say Linux Mint is a fine choice for everyone, I think you are presuming a set of user profiles and audience requirements. Linux Mint is awesome, but I think it is tuned and focused on Linux enthusiasts and fans. I am not sure it would be suitable for the general wider userbase of casual computer users.

I am not saying everyone needs to like Unity, there are plenty of other options in the Ubuntu Software Center, but the user-testing driven nature of Unity puts it on a good course for meeting the needs of most people…we are just not there yet.

Anonymous

This is the kind of situation we want to prevent – people who are fine with the design of Unity but left because it was crashy and glitchy. This is why there is such a key focus on resolving these issues.

Suggestionator

mint comes with all the codecs. ready out of the box (ok, i know in ubuntu, theyre just a few clicks away / of course not i can’t find the goddamn package manager / found the software centre, but i’m not to keen on it)

it’s very easy to find your way around, especially when coming from a win background, like most newbies

please ubuntu, give as back at least the hierarchical (no idea how to spell this word) menu structure. with unity its such a hassle to find my programmes……

(23456 + suggestionator = same person)

http://www.facebook.com/jbumaat Julius Ybañez Buma-at

I hope this process is going to be implemented and targeted for Ubuntu 12.04LTS. If so, it’s about time to have this kind of process in order to create a more faster, stable and reliable distro. Less bugs + less issues = less bloatware.

I still love Ubuntu. I think it’s the best thing to happen to Unix since Linux. And I think all this blood-letting is just part of the process (and hats off to Jono for his thick skin). And he’s already alluded to this, but I’d like to add my voice to the chorus that greater community participation is needed (and riling them up with things like Unity seems to be a pretty good way to get the ‘silent majority’ to finally speak up), but Ubuntu could also make that participation easier. How? Things like participating in the package installation statistics! Maybe that idea could be expanded on to include just how often/long those packages are actually used. (I keep installing Gambas2, but I’ve been too busy to actually use it.) It would also be nice if Ubuntu provided a common comment area for casual communication with the various development teams. For example, I have some thoughts about Evolution that I tried to forward through ‘proper channels’, but found it so difficult that I nearly gave up, and, once done, there turned out to be some communication gap there that got my idea summarily dismissed. That’s just really not conducive to the process. It makes me not want to bother.

Oh, and, in that vein, Jono, my experience with people suggests that more options during installation would be perceived as more in keeping with the spirit of ubuntu, whereas slam-dunk, wholesale, take-it-or-leave-it changes tend to violate it. Sorry, but I moved the buttons back to the right, ditched Unity (after giving it a shot), but was even disappointed in the latest Gnome changes, too. I might actually go back to KDE after a decade away. But why should I have to download and install Kubuntu? Let’s just have a checklist/radio-buttons right up front to control these thing with. Maybe even a post-installation modifier that would allow us to easily change our minds without having to wade through the forums?

Again, I love Ubuntu, and the work Canonical does, even if I ultimately end up rejecting some of it.

Anonymous

Well I find it unusable on a day to day basis so am keeping with 10.10 until support stops when I’ll look around the distros and choose one I can continue to work with. I use Ubuntu to run my web development business, not for games or homework. I could be back to Windoze if the situation doesn’t improve. When the LTS release comes out, it’ll be VERY interesting to see what corporate users (if there are any) and academia do when hit with Unity or Gnome Shell. Just as bad as each other at the moment.

Anonymous

I think the main issue with Unity is the change in the usability paradigm. The majority of computer users in the world use Windows (over 85%). Trying to copy Mac doesn’t help at all. If you’re willing to ditch all these potential users and just go for people that haven’t ever seen a computer before or just browse on phones or fondleslabs then you’re going about it the right way I’d say. No reason it can’t be functional AND beautiful, but you might as well chuck it in the bin if it’s just beautiful.

http://twitter.com/jspaleta Jef Spaleta

You aren’t going to address this until Canonical very purposesly starts treating its “upstream” projects as distinct and separate entities from Ubuntu the distribution. Unity quality suffers because its never been given an opportunity to live and breath and an upstream project not tied to a specific operating system deliverable deadline. Significant compromises are made because of that management directed tie-in which mixes up time-based and feature-based deliverable workflows in weird ways.

And this problem isn’t limited to Unity..its systemic with everything Canonical does in-house that is tied directly to the 6 month distro release schedule.

You want more community participation in the technical side of building up those project and doing things like writing unit tests? Easy, target Debian Unstable as primary target for Canonical upstream projects. Because the technical proficient community is over there, just a small wall garden fence away.

-jef

Anonymous

Exactly, you “were” trying to bring Free Software to more people. You just needed to sort out the over reliance on Terminal so it was even less Geeky than it was and if you made it looked nicer in the meantime, no one would complain I’m sure. However, changing the whole UI like you have was a waste of effort IMHO. It’s vastly less usable.

Anonymous

The nearest I found to 10.10 is Mint 12 with Mate. It’s not bad, but will get better. I expect I’ll move to that if it’s matured enough by the time support ends for 10.10.

Anonymous

“I have a friend whos recently converted from vista to unity and he’s happy with it.”
That’s the key thing. New users should come to linux without any geek’s assistance. I think canonical going in right direction, but they need to work even harder to reach there. What community can do now is support them in the ways possible even if you don’t use unity or gnome shell. If anybody can’t support at least wish them good luck and stop spreading hate messages (I’m not suggesting u r doing that, just speaking in general.)

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000753612779 Troy Leitzsey

What was so “geeky” about Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, which I reinstalled on both of my computers recently after removing an extremely sluggish 11.10? I only wish 10.04 LTS would get five year support. Frankly, I’m not interested in a “tablet” edition of Ubuntu.

http://twitter.com/jspaleta Jef Spaleta

The codec thing will change. As Mint is run more as a business and less like a hobby, the legal risk associated with shipping the codecs out-of-the-box will rise and Mint will absolutely have to change how they deal with codecs.

If Mint’s popularity is contingent on willfully ignoring the legal issues associated with patented codecs, then Mint faces a serious problem as it grows from a hobby to a product because the out-of-the-box codecs will have to be jettisoned to avoid very obvious and very expensive legal fights which will eat up any revenue resources Mint establishes.

There is no “cake and eat it to” solution here.
The only reason Mint can get away with it is because Mint has been primarily under the radar. As its notoriety increases so do the legal risks for distributing the codecs out of the box.

-jef

234567

cos mint users are ubuntu users, aren’t they?

http://people.iola.dk/olau/ Ole Laursen

I’m inclined to agree with the bugginess actually. I recently departed from Ubuntu, but before that I would always find something fairly obvious broken after a new release, usually the in-house developed stuff, not to be fixed until the next release half a year later.

It has always struck me as odd because it happened every time, ever since in-house developed stuff started turning up. Good thing you’re starting to think about it, though, it did leave the impression that the in-house things were done by a bunch of amateurs (which they were probably not, given that it would work fine in the next release).

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HQGG6A6HTQWHBJGOQVFKENFQFM Alexandru

Really? Change fonts. Change the color of the theme. Change the icons of the theme. Install a new theme….etc.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_4Q36GVZBHLBRQ5KJTWKPQWI6MY Samantha

Ubuntu lost me over Unity. I understand I can install another desktop but I didn’t think that’s what Ubuntu was about. In the past, it had always been a nice, stable, userfriendly desktop from the moment I installed it. Now they’re telling me I have to install a new desktop? I switched to another Linux desktop and am enjoying a desktop that I like. But best of luck to Ubuntu in the direction that it’s going. The time we spent together was good

Anonymous

I have one big question about this focus on ‘quality’.

Let me describe the situation as it is for me.

My experience so far, is that the last two releases of Ubuntu showed a serious decrease in performance for audio production tools. In 11.04 it seemed to be caused by Unity, since switching to XFCE solved the problem, but in 11.10 even that is not the case any more.
And yes, I do have the ubuntu-studio packages installed, and everything set up according to linuxmusicians.org, and I am a huge fan of the Ubuntu-Studio-team, since they seem to be the only ones that are really interested in this issue.

In all pre-11 Ubuntu releases a rt-kernel was required for real-time audio processing. I was told that since a couple of kernel releases ago, a rt-kernel was not necessary anymore, since some of it’s features that enable real-time priorities for audio were implemented in the generic kernel. I was thrilled of course, but I was very disappointed when I actually noticed a drop in performance.

It could be argued that it is not a priority to achieve a performance for real-time audio, because it is supposedly used by only a few for these kinds of tasks, but I beg to differ. Mac users and Windows users never had to worry about their operating system to achieve real-time audio. That’s why many people went and stick to Mac, and secondly to Windows. It is only in the linux world where there still are specialized distributions needed to achieve it. Musicians want their system to work, not to fiddle around with config scripts, user groups, irq settings etc… so they use what works. On Ubuntu it does not as it should.

My point may seem to be off-topic so far, but here is my question:
What is the definition of ‘quality’ for Ubuntu? Is
it the ‘experience’ of quality or the quality of what the operating
system does with the machine it runs on?

I do hope it will become the latter very soon…

K1FRi

thinking about it:

i don’t expect much from a GUI. i’m new to the system, i wanna find out whats there, check out all the applications & settings, select my favourite apps, get a few fancy icons for them for quick access and then get on with it and check out some pron online!
(ok, if you offered some smooth window management or other fancy stuff, i wouldn’t mind either…..)

but (correct me if i’m mistaken) unity doesn’t offer even that. i am not able too find applications that i know exist! (switching to another desktop regularly proves that). i cannot help it, it somehow makes me feel handicapped sort of thing……….

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/C6S22ANL35LHAH27EX43XFQKTQ Klau3

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I like Ubuntu and Unity, but…

with one word (gut reaction) Ubuntu is:

moderate

Recently I thought about why I think
this is the case and after some time this topics came up to my mind:

The Dash is to slow. It should be
double as fast as it is in 11.10 + some parts like the Music-Lens are
conceptual great but doesn’t work in real life.

When using the M-Lens and then after
some time terminate Banshee, the next time I open Banshee and hit the
play button it will play the previously in the M-Lens selected music
again, even if I select inside Banshee another album, so I have to
especially go to the play queue menu and clean it up – this sucks
so much that I never use the M-Lens – sad but true. I abuse the Dash mostly as not-so-often-used-program-launcher and to search often used files that I know the name of. I tried hard to use it for more tasks but it takes just to much steps and reacts to slow.

Indicators should only show status
entries if there is something to show. Gwibber clutters the messaging
menu to display that I have 0 messages, 0 replies and 0 private
messages at the moment. If this is a design dessication please add an
indicator setting to system settings where it is possible to regulate
general indicator behavior.

Please reduce the clicks a user has to
preform for common actions e.g. if a user has no printer connected
and opens the print dialog you have to:

select ‘Print to File’

set output format to PDF

than enter a name and hit enter

All those steps could and should be
reduced to one. Preselect if there is no printer ‘Print to File’, PDF
and set the focus to the ‘name’ box, all left to do for a user would be type in
a name and hit enter.

I know nobody that has ever saved a
file as Postscript (most user won’t even know what this file format
is for)! Ubuntu feels kind of slow because there are to often
ungeneralized dialogs that need to much interaction to get things
done. Solving this would speed up Ubuntu for the gut feeling and for
real.

LTS will address so many of these issues imho…. I have been running Alpha for close to two months as my primary install just so that I can be in the trenches reporting bugs and getting them addressed before RC.

http://www.benjaminkerensa.com Benjamin Kerensa

I think Canonical is doing a better job at engaging the community to participate and especially the Community Team led by Jono.

Laxman Poudel

Canonical and Ubuntu must be integrated for users like us to enjoy with ubuntu OS

wbl

i agree,kindof, with what many here say. I don’t care about tablets when i’m using my laptop. My laptop OS must be ideal for my laptop, forget the rest.

However, i would like a real open platform for tablets too. Why must it be 1 product??? Is that more efficient???

Anywayz, more on topic: congrats on installing some automated testing,
an acceptance environment and a focussed team for quality. We need it.

User

Hi

Some background, my work now is not related with programing in any way, but my former work was software development, so i know my way around computers.

I do some tweaking to my desktop but nothing much, i have the quick acces of my prefered applications on the bar (on win Xp and Ubuntu Gnome 2) so i don’t have to search for them. All of this i can do in unity so i’m pleased and have the plus of maximize the space of the application windows, and the integrated seach for the documents it really great….. and I did and i do real work

There is alway room for improvements, for example the discoverability of the non preferred apps in the dash and other things, but i will support you (with usage and my money) and i will keep using ubuntu because it work for me

So, this message is from someone from the silence users out there that enjoy the work that you do (canonical and ubuntu community)

bye

K1FRi

thats absolutly right. i.e. in gnome 2 i need exactly 2 clicks to access any application. how many do i need in unity???????

I work in academia, using Ubuntu on all workstations and servers in the lab (as well as home). I run into the occasional bug here and there, but overall I am able to reproduce a 100% functional work environment on a brand new machine in no time. In my field, we are lucky that there is the amazing neurodebian project which packages a large number of software toolboxes in my field, ready to be installed on debian & ubuntu. This has a huge positive impact on my day to day life, saving me tons of time in maintenance. And I love Unity, it’s beautiful and powerful. It made my 60 years old mother in law want to try ubuntu. I was quite jealous of quicksilver for mac users, where you can pretty much forget about the mouse altogether. Unity is pretty close of that. I do agree that there are rooms for improvements (and less glitches in new releases), but overall I am a very happy user. Thanks for everything.

Nityanandi

mark_shuttleworth_space.pngYou +1’d this publicly. Undoafricanambassador.blogspot.comI am so grateful that Mark Shuttleworth is indefatigable, because his is an authentic mission. Genius always comes from Beyond. Thank you to us all, Community.

K1FRi

i just downloaded unity desktop out of curiosity kuz i still wanna know…….., well anyway here’s what you get

30 minutes of unity

graphic glitches (blank screens at full sreen)

unity button: shows 3 categories (the other 3 of no use for now): media apps / internet apps / more apps

? looking for more apps: shows two categories: frequently (not much
useful) and the rest (292): where’s exactly is the principle? do i
have to browse through all of them?
? + lets say i found my
favourite app: no right-mouse-click-options to put it in the laucher, on
the desktop or anywhere else ? BIG QUESTION: how can i get unity to not
have to search for every application??????
? option: find files: what is it for? i hardly ever look for a single file and then have no option but to execute it

shortcuts (such as alt+tab) in search window won’t not work

found out in the search, you can use things like „video“, „music“, „internet“……cool idea, BUT: the results are pretty bad

think
about it! usability is like you say one of your core aims and it’d
need just a few adjustments to make me a happy bunny unity user and many
many more (hopefully) kuz i’m one happy linux/opensource-multiplier

EDIT:

39 minutes of unity:

all right, i’m going back to some other desktop, full screen just gives
me blanks……………………be nice to see unity around again in my
working environment…….

Joseph Salisbury

Jono, how did you get into my external disk array and get that pic of me… Shame on you for hacking me, lol

http://www.facebook.com/jlacroix82 Jay LaCroix

That’s not the point! Sure, you can install another desktop environment on top of Ubuntu, but new users won’t know how to do that, and they’ll just look at Linux Mint and how much better the default experience is, and then jump ship very quickly before they even had a chance to realize they had choice in the first place. Unity = the death of Ubuntu. PERIOD.

http://www.facebook.com/jlacroix82 Jay LaCroix

Not if they’re using the Debian version.

http://www.facebook.com/jlacroix82 Jay LaCroix

I agree, the default Ubuntu experience was always very awesome and complete. There was always little I had to do to configure it, it was such a fantastic user experience. Now, if I’m going to spend time installing and tweaking a different desktop environment, why even use Ubuntu at all? I say use a distro that already has it together out of the box. Unity may be awesome for netbooks, but netbooks are dead. Time to give it up. I say maintain Unity for those that want it (since only the technical users are really going to care) and adopt something better and more complete instead.

Dave

Mint does use a legal disclaimer and so NO further needs will apply.

Mangolok1426

is it really a problem of new users? so someone started using linux and immediately want to try all the DE flavores? get some sense please.ubuntu has alaways come with one default DE (gnome classic ),and so does/dis every distro why don’t you attack Mint for not giving its users the choice to use unity?nonesense period.

EdGonz

Good point!

And Ubuntu as a company, has the guts to “think outside of the box”…all the other distributions resemble/mimic (or copy) the Windows XP desktop. Even Microsoft itself is moving away from this desktop; it started in Windows 7 and Windows 8 will be a total different desktop experience.
The only whiners are the so called “geek masses” in linux, and as you pointed out…they can always load a different UI.

http://twitter.com/mohammedsiddieg mohammed siddieg

@jono keep up the good work,and don’t mind those closed minded linux trollware.we love ubuntu and all what it represents.you can’t have a rational arguments with those trolls,they are here to piss all over the place, it is the curse of opensource community,the shear number of self acclaimed pundits is sickening,but this is price of success.

Scott

You guys failed. The last couple releases were horrible. After 6 years of only Ubuntu on my work and play machines, I have switched to mint. Not looking back.

Guest

The best idea I’ve seen thus far from a paradigm perspective would be that of the KDE Plasma desktop. You have different configurations targeting different platforms which can be implemented as needed. There can never truly be a one size fits all UI that works equally as well on all form factors; it will be a jack of all trades, but a master of none. I’ve tried both the Windows 8 developer’s preview and unity. The core thing they both lack is centralized control as you get lost in the given application running at the time and they both require a plethora of unnecessary steps to accomplish switching between tasks. If anyone were to use this for serious multitasking they would end up pulling their hair out due to sheer frustration. The Gnome Shell at least tries to address this with the expo feature but in the end it is still an ugly hack due to the fact that it is cumbersome to implement (as opposed to, say, screen edges from Compiz). If Unity could re implement centralized control, ease of implementation, and efficient location of desired functionality (whether it be documents, programs, et al, without having to search for everything) they would be much better off. While Gnome 2 may have been considered ugly, it did exactly those three things, and did them well. One thing that irked me about both aforementioned products is that they treat their end users like morons (e.g. can only do one thing at a time and it has to be shiny). Over simplification isn’t simplification at all, it’s obfuscation. Evolution doesn’t discard functional traits over ones that are new, just for the sake of aesthetics, and neither should anything else that wishes to survive: traits should be discarded when they are no longer effective. This grinds everything else I’ve seen aside from Android to a pulp (
http://dot.kde.org/2011/12/14/plasma-active-two-released). Better luck next time guys.

Dogzilla1000

I’ve been a loyal UBUNTU user for years. The new user interface is terrible, and my new computer has had issues dual booting UBUNTU with Win 7. No help on the web site.

Any wonder why UBUNTU is yesterday’s news?

Christian Convey

Most users would be happy convert from using Vista to being beaten with a tire iron.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=721935178 Ray LaPointe

I hate to say this and come across as negative. Mint has taken gnome shell in a fantastic direction that merges old and new in a beautiful design. Unity lacks flex. It annoyed me, and I actually hate to say this but the overall design was/is a disappointment. That hurts me to say. Its like telling a girlfriend that those jeans do make her but look fat, or your cousin that he shouldn’t sing. Unity needs to go back on the drawing board. Its never good to have all your eggs in one basket. get another basket.

Mangolok1426

really you liked the design of gnome shell in mint that even Clement himself is not happy with,happy with all the redundancy,and the uncertainty if any extension would work with the next gnome update or no?,happy with fact you need to go all the way to the left to launch an app in the lower part of the dock,happy with flexibility of gnome shell that doesn’t even have an official tweak tool,the fact the you need an extension for shutdown,for windows controls,and for almost every simple task,you sure love rotten eggs!

Linuxwolfgar

The only balls this guy has see were on his chin!

Linuxwolfgar

I call “Bull Shite” on that comment. Canonical and the Ubuntu Support Board wants you to like Unity and keep your mouth shut, or you will be banned! Most of users of Ubuntu have moved on to Mint. Canonical, “You’re either with us or against us” view of users has caused us all to leave. Goodbye Canonical and Ubuntu, Hello Mint! Be careful what you ask for all your support my just leave! See Ya!

http://www.benjaminkerensa.com Benjamin Kerensa

Banned from what? I have always made it known that I prefer Gnome over Unity and so have a number of other Ubuntu Members but instead of complaining we simply install the Desktop Environment of our choice. and for me that happens to be Gnome-Shell with a Classic Interface although I do use Unity from time to time.

http://twitter.com/mohammedsiddieg mohammed siddieg

@ linuxwolfgar ungrateful people like you really belong to mint,where you can enjoy all the comfort of ubuntu while swearing and lambasting ubuntu (relishing in the delusion that mint is something else and not ubuntu after 1 month of updates and elementary theme) like any pathetic crybaby,i wish ubuntu would really ban you and other minty parasites

Anonymous

“think outside of the box”

Problem is, they are not thinking at all except for their own purposes. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if Microsoft or Apple have a hand in this somehow.

Ubuntu is dead… Long live MINT!

Anonymous

I agree too… I used to use Gnome 2 and really enjoyed it… Now, I use KDE mainly. Mint is a great step forward for Gnome 3 also…

My problem with Ubuntu isn’t Unity. I’ve been using Ubuntu since version five, and I actually like many things about Unity. My problem with Ubuntu and Unity is configurability.

It’s great to have a base configuration already set in Unity for new users, however there needs to be some way to enable an “advanced” mode that allows more advanced users to configure Unity how they want it.

Oh, and bring back the ability to have desktop icons.

Jojobinks

Of course it doesn’t make sense to you, you don’t understand quality.

Anonymous

I use to love ubuntu and the directions it was taking until 10.10. I even developped applications like UCC (ubuntu control center) and release it in gpl to the comunnity and exchange some ideas about it with Andre Gondim in the past. But after 11.04 i think that using the Unity desktop is almost a “obligation” to me… it just can’t get used to it. The biggest problem even to a high end user like me is that i can not work as efficient as i was before. I can’t see which windows and programs are running without revealing the launcher and click..click..click.. o my god what was i was working ??! Where’s my multitasking computer ? The dash and the lenses are preatty to see but their use in real life just doesn’t work for me. I really appreciate the effort of canonical in linux desktop, but it look’s like they are putting design in front of usability, and that can be a fatal mistake in times where android might come to the desktop as well.

Mangolok1426

@benjaminimgo why can’t you use compiz edge binding for expo or scale to multitask or even the pretty alt+tab in ubuntu 11.10,those are three elegant ways for multitasking,plus the keyboard shortcuts is great in unity.

Jon E. Guest

More newspaper words from the worst distro around.

Jon E. Guest

Lol, The Ubuntu “community” seem like a bunch of barely coherent, whingey little bikeshedders. The fact that Ubuntu has so many cretin fanboys is reason in itself to avoid it like the plague.

Jon E. Guest

If you want to know why people are throwing so much hate at Ubuntu recently you only need to take a look at omgubuntu.co.uk. It’s epitomises everything that people hate about Ubuntu users. Lot’s of loud mouths but very few IQ points. Really, if you thought the articles were bad, just read the comments.

If that’s what you call your “community” then god help you when they start trying to submit patches. Or even worse – trying to “help out” with marketing and make your distro look like it’s run by dorky, 14-year-old “SEO experts”.

Fred Durst

Dude, I know you probably already know this, but Mint inherit most of their packages directly from Ubuntu. That means 99% of the fuck-ups made by the oxymoronic “Ubuntu developers” also end up in Mint.

Wy not just make a clean break and start using a real distro that isn’t just trying to cash in a community effort?

Thomas R. Oll

That’s what happens when you take the audio stack written by smart Fedora developers and let Ubuntu’s moronic packagers try to guess how it works.

Samuel L. Trashtalker

Mark Shuttleworth is just a charlatan trying to pioneer a business model of making a community do his dirty work for promises of fame and glory. If you read his blog you’ll notice he uses the word “we” a lot. Nice try shuttlecock.

He needs to either put up the big moneys and actually build a product or accept that he is just too sleazy and transparent to succeed at the game he’s playing.

Joey Sneddon

You wouldn’t know technical proficiency if it hit you in the face.

Fred R. Motherfukcr

holy shit, all this name-dropping, groupie-ism among Ubuntards has got to stop.

Paul Christoforo

You idiots at Canonical are buying into every snake-oil methodology there is.

Like all talantless companies, when methodology and process fails you, you think you just need more of it. QA, product life-cycle management, Extreme Programming, DevOps and other obscure, ill-defined junk that’s just designed to sell conferences, books and training.

I bet Shuttleworth is all over DevOps right now. Oh wait, a quick Google search confirms that he is balls-deep into DevOps already. Even more so than I expected. But it seems he’s on the wrong side of the hustle.

Jonny B. Choad

This comes to mind:

Ron O. Trollin’

You sound like a man in fear for his job security.

Anonymous

I hate to say that, but i have to agree with you. Everytime i use windows7 i have the same feeling. Windows7 has the best window handling and the best dash i have ever used in any OS. It just work’s the way you expect it to work. I hope that ubuntu could reimplement some features (dash… please) of it and give it’s own touch.

http://www.cashforsmartphones.com/estimator_step1 Sell Electronics

That was quite an information to be aware of.

Anonymous

@3215d97b4c5a140dabbd062164d660a3:disqus i could use it, but we have to agree that it isn’t as intuitive and easy as look to the bottom bar